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Sinclair Lewis
CASS TIMBERLANE (1945) Reviews and Comments by Patrick Killough (A) Review for http://www.bn.com Here is how your review will appear on the title page: Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), retired from U.S. Foreign Service. July 28, 2005 REVIEWER'S RATING OF CASS TIMBERLANE: Four Stars ( * * * * ) TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: A Good Wife is Hard to Find, Harder to Keep. In DODSWORTH (1929) and CASS TIMBERLANE (1945 ) Sinclair Lewis produced two notably similar novels, as similar as two sides of the same coin. In both tales an older American man is married to a younger American woman. In both stories the younger woman is bored and restless and has an affair with a man more glamorous than her husband. There is, however, a difference. The strayed but at heart (dubiously) reformed Fran Dodsworth seeks reconciliation with her husband Samuel. He makes a stab at it then rejects her for another woman. The adulterous but more repentant Virginia (Jinny) Timberlane seeks reconciliation with Cass and he wholeheartedly and lovingly takes her back. *** Cass Timberlane at tale's beginning was a 41 year old elected judge in the fictional city of Great Republic, Minnesota. A one-term Congressman who chose not to run for re-election after being divorced by his first wife, Cass was a member of Grand Republic's small interlocking elite. He loved cats and adopted Cleo, a black stray. With no lack of suitable women to choose as spouse number two, he was smitten by a young out of town, cat loving 'radical' whom he first noticed when she testified in a trial before his bench. Virginia (Ginny) Marshland was a draftsman and later during early days of World War II a not very talented newspaper cartoonist as well as briefly a success in local little theater. After developing mild diabetes, Ginny lost interest in her career. She had married Cass in a glittering church ceremony which she insisted on. She had one baby, which died within an hour of birth. Lecherous local men were always after her and eventually she moved to New York to be with one of them. Living in the suburbs with her lover's decadent sister, she grew more careless of her health, fell into severe diabetes which culminated in near death comas. Ginny's stuffy, but loyal and loving husband Cass sped to her rescue and took her home for a second chance at proving herself to him and his friends. *** In the 1947 film version, Spencer Tracy played Judge Cass Timberlane. Lana Turner was Ginny. Zachary Taylor played Cass's boyhood friend, adult lawyer, tomcat and eventual seducer of Ginny. *** Although his creative powers dimmed after receiving the 1930 Nobel Prize for literature, Sinclair Lewis rallied for a last hurrah in CASS TIMBERLANE. There is a cast of characters deserving further development, in particular, lawyer Sweeney Fishberg. 'He was a saint and a shyster part Jewish and part Irish and part German he had once ... taught Greek in a West Virginia college, he was a Roman Catholic, and a mystic who bothered his priest with metaphysical questions he was in open sympathy with the Communist Party' (Ch. 10). *** CASS TIMBERLANE is a good, smooth read. It is not without insights into evolving American character, draws on Sinclair Lewis's own experiences with love and disappointment and exemplifies his last creative effort at systematic, hands-on research in Duluth and elsewhere preparing for his 'judge' novel. -OOO- OTHER BOOKS ALSO RECOMMENDED: Sinclair Lewis, DODSWORTH, ELMER GANTRY, THE JOB. Graham Greene, THE END OF THE AFFAIR. (B) Review for http://www.amazon.com Cass Timberlane : A Novel of Husbands and Wives by Sinclair Lewis Here is your review the way it will appear: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: The Guilt of Sinclair Lewis: Not Sending More Often for Sweeney Fishberg, July 30, 2005 Reviewer: T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews There may be people who read Shakespeare's HENRY IV and HENRY V simply because they enjoy the minor figure of Sir John Falstaff. If so, there may also be a few who re-read Sinclair Lewis's two novels CASS TIMBERLANE (1945) and KINGSBLOOD ROYAL (1947) for their fleeting glimpses of an amiable lawyer, the even more minor Sweeney Fishberg. The power structure of Grand Republic, Minnesota is made up of stuffy, inbred, well off, underachieving and very ordinary middle class men and women. They preen themselves and endlessly meow at most of their peers. Former Congressman and now Judge Cass Timberlane was made by that only-in-Midwest-America elite, though he challenges its values by enjoying good books and playing a flute. But even for this whimsically deviant member of his caste, it is a stretch when the 41 year old divorced Cass is smitten by 24 year old out of town working girl Virginia (Jinny) Marshland. He pursues her, persuades her to marry him but then lets her slide into boredom with his friends, into untended diabetes and into an affair with another lawyer, his boyhood friend. Cass nobly takes Jinny back when the affair sputters and Jinny in the final paragraph triumphantly turns her attention to new storm windows for her bedroom (not the first Lewis heroine to do just that). When young Jinny is first noticed by Judge Timberlane, she lives on the other side of the tracks, in a poor, culturally diverse and bohemian side of Grand Republic barely noticed by the city's elite, unless they are slum landlords. Jinny is a draftsman working for a Jewish firm. Her friends are her age and politically radical. They can be youthfully silly as when one says "Hail the Hippopotamus" and the rest dutifully guffaw. An older lawyer, Sweeney Fishberg, seems normal in Jinny's hippy milieu and eccentric in Cass's stuffy law court, but is a happy warrior in both worlds. Feeling a fish out of water amid the tempestuous young talkers at a party Cass attended in Jinny's boarding house, the Judge nonetheless awoke when Jinny's employer and wife dropped by, along with Sweeney Fishberg, "... perhaps the most remarkable man in the cosmos of Grand Republic and surrounding terrain. He was an attorney, of liberal tastes, equally likely to take a labor-union case for nothing or to take the most fraudulent of damage suits for a contingent fee which, to the fury of his Yankee wife, he was likely to give to a fund for strikers -- any strikers on any strike." "He was a saint and shyster; part Jewish and part Irish and part German; he had once acted in a summer stock company, and once taught Greek in a West Virginia college; he was a Roman Catholic, and a mystic who bothered his priest with metaphysical questions; he was in open sympathy with the Communist Party." "For twenty years, ever since he had come to Grand Republic from his natal Massachusetts at the age of thirty, he had been fighting all that was rich and proud and puffy in the town, and he had never won a single fight nor lost his joy in any of them, and he was red-headed and looked like a Cockney comedian. He was nine years older than Cass, and no lawyer in the district ever brought such doubtful suits into court, yet no lawyer was more decorous, more co-operative with the judge, and Cass believed that Sweeney had thrown to him all the votes he could influence in Cass's elections as congressman, judge, and member of the Aurora Borealis Literary Association." (Ch. 10) Near novel's end Sweeney Fishberg was defending before Judge Timberlane a laborer charged with killing his foreman with a pickaxe. Fishberg suggested that another worker had done the killing and made the case revolve around which laborer was wearing a mustache at the time of killing. In Timberlane's chambers at day's end, court reporter George Hame said that Fishberg would convince the jury that the accused was not guilty if only "he had a single bit of evidence on his side." To the judge's question, "What is guilt," Hame replied, "You want a real definition, Judge -- one to go in the textbooks? ... Guilt is what makes you send for Sweeney Fishberg." (Ch.47) A reader might forget the names of most of Sinclair Lewis's characters in this or any other novel. He will not forget that "most remarkable man," Sweeney Fishberg. Sinclair Lewis made millions by writing about and poking fun at some of the most ordinary, underachieving middle class men and women in America. Why did he not more often imagine in print American giants resembling at least Babe Ruth, Marian Anderson, Charles Lindbergh, H.L. Mencken, Woodrow Wilson and others who made history throughout his lifetime? If Sinclair Lewis is guilty of anything, it is of NOT sending more often for Sweeney Fishberg. -OOO- |